Starting today, we’ll be open 9am-10pm for the summer!!!

In celebration, we’ll be giving a free coffee/tea with a bagel purchase before 11am* AND we’ll have a late happy hour 9-10pm!*

*offers for a limited time.

https://www.facebook.com/events/303520076448672/?fref=ts

After a long day of marching and action against capitalism and the state come join Red & Black for a celebratory evening of music, drink, and solidarity!

Our Menu is now available online! Just click MENU above.

…and yes, we can do To-Go orders!

We now have an online store!

Check it out by clicking STORE at the top of this page.

On 2.28.13 we hosted an event “Patriarchy and the Mmovement: Current discussions & organizing against patriarchy in Portland, Seattle, and Oakland.” The event was amazing and the information that was discussed that night was incredibly moving and crucial to current movement building. As a space that holds true to feminist, anti-sexist, and anti-patriarchal values and behavior we were excited to host an event that focused on the challenges of confronting patriarchy within movement building, the analysis and praxis that is being formed, and the urgency of confronting these issues. At that event, a community member was called out by a panelist speaking form out of town, and then called out by name, by a survivor and her support team who were in the room.

After this occurred, a prepared statement, that is in contradiction to our safer space policy, was read by members of a collective attending the event, and those members attempted to support their comrade who had been called out for patriarchal behavior. This person has been involved with multiple accountability processes and was called out for minimizing the survivors needs and undermining the experiences they had. We find that any practice that further denies the voice of survivors of abuse/assault will further empower perpetrators of abuse within our community. This is unacceptable.

An overarching goal that we hold as a collective is to support people who are marginalized & oppressed by society. We also strive to provide a community space that is welcoming to and prioritizes the needs of those who are marginalized by structures of power and dominance which includes, but is not limited to, survivors of abuse/assault.

We would like to move forward in ending oppressive behaviors in our society and we are fully committed to survivor support to the fullest of our capacities as a community space. Some of the ways we will do this are as follows;

1.) providing a meeting place for the folks who are equipped to do survivor support to organize

2.) providing a space to hold trainings in such work and host fundraising events for those groups

3.) confronting patriarchal behaviors and other oppressive behavior and practice

4.) striving to support survivors of abuse/assault by believing them and doing what they ask

We are open for feedback and suggestions and are very proud to have hosted a feminist/post-feminist discussion within our space. We await a statement from the organizers of the event and constructive discussions to follow.

Sincerely,

The Red & Black Collective

Finally, our window is fixed thanks to some ingenuity & elbow grease!

We hope everyone will enjoy it over the summer!

Ta-da!

Special thanks to everyone who donated!

We’ll be closed on December 11th (Tuesday) for our quarterly Collective Day.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

We will be back up & running December 12th (Wednesday) at 11am!

We will be open for our normal hours (11am-9pm) on Thursday the 22nd.

A little over a month ago we alerted our friends and allies that the Red & Black Cafe was in trouble. We had reached a crisis point, were unable to pay our mortgage, and we made the difficult decision to stop paying ourselves. We’re happy to say, that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. At this point we’re treading water and are figuring out when we can pay ourselves again.

This is due to our own grit and determination to survive and because of the outpouring of support in the form of donations and increased business. But also in the form of help. Help with things like design work, cutting our ingredient costs, & setting up amazing events…

The Red & Black clearly matters to a lot of folks!

We’re a quarter of the way to our goal of $20,000. So we’re kicking up our fundraising drive and we need even more help to reach outside of our immediate communities. We also have some awesome project ideas and could use help getting them off the ground. If you’ve got some skills, and/or know of someone who can help us out, contact us! Spread the word.

Tell your friends, family, co-workers, and that person you just met why you think we’re special!

Here are some suggestions but please do add your own:

• 100% vegan food & drink. We are a space that is unapologetically for animal liberation. We regularly host fundraisers, prisoner letter writing nights and animal lib speakers and workshops. We’re also friendly to omnivores and, we hope, informative and not preachy on the subject.
• Safer space: We’re committed to supporting survivors of sexual assault and relationship abuse. We are also committed to confronting and disrupting oppressive language and behavior in the cafe and we encourage the same from you or anyone else who sees it.
• The Red & Black is welcoming to folks who are houseless. Whether or not you have an address you are welcome to: use the bathroom w/o buying something first, have free wifi, charge your phone, use the free computer terminals, get hot water, come to events or meet your friend. We are working with Sisters of the Road to explore the possibility of accepting EBT (foodstamps/snap) from houseless folks, people over 60 and people on SSI! It’s not a sure thing but we’re making every effort to figure this out.
• Environmental stuff: We pick up coffee and supplies by massive, amazing bike trailer. Our produce is local, organic and bike delivered! We serve food from the lowest trophic level!
• Labor movement & co-op stuff: We’re an Industrial Workers of the World closed shop (100% union members), we’re worker owned, there’s no boss and we’re all paid the same wage for the same work. Every participates in the day to day restaurant work as well as the behind the scenes work. We act in solidarity with labor every chance we get. This includes buying authentically fair trade coffee from Equal Exchange, another worker owned co-op. We participate in regional and national worker co-op efforts through the USFederation of Worker Co-ops.

Thank you so much for your support! <3

Please donate if you can (anything helps), and share widely!  If the “DONATE” button below does not take you directly to the Red & Black’s PayPal page, please log in and enter “general@redandblackcafe.com” as the recipient.

Follow us on Twitter @redandblackcafe & ‘Like’ us on Facebook and get regular updates at facebook.com/redandblackcafe (please also hover over the ‘Like’ button on our page & check “show in news feed”)

 Stay tuned: we’re organizing a volunteer days to make major improvements to our space.

Book your event with us! This is huge; we need your awesome events! Keep in mind that we do music, film, workshops, fundraisers for cool groups, game nights, art openings etc. For selected events, we will stay open til Midnight! It’s easy just go here: redandblackcafe.com/event-booking.